Overcome

by Melanie Rachel

  “Gotcha?” Elizabeth asked, surprised. Who is . . . She thought back to the introductions. Celia.

  “Suddenly you weren’t tubing anymore,” Celia said confidently, her dark features pinching. “Been there. What set you off?” She waved off Zach’s warning to let Elizabeth finish first.

  Elizabeth tapped her heel on the ground, anxiously glancing around the circle. The faces seemed sympathetic. “Um, the smell of blood.”

  Celia groaned. “God, that’s the worst.” Two of the men nodded slightly. Another clenched his hands in his lap and spun his thumbs around each other furiously. Elizabeth’s stomach rolled with tension, though why, she couldn’t say. Celia kept talking. “Did you know it’s not the blood that smells, it’s the chemical reaction when it hits the skin?”

  Shaking her head, Elizabeth sat quietly, waiting for Celia to continue. But now she made a hand motion instead, indicating Elizabeth should finish.

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Nightmares?” asked a small, wiry man who sat opposite Elizabeth. His name escaped her.

  She shrugged.

  “That’s a yes,” Celia chimed in. “Probably every damn night, right?”

  Elizabeth waited a moment and then nodded. “Close.”

  “So,” one of the men on the other side of the circle interrupted with an encouraging smile, “you were about to tell us what happened in Brussels.”

  Elizabeth lifted her eyes to his face. He reminded her a little of Richard, though he was older, his skin, hair, and eyes dark brown. They shared the same easy grin. Simon. His name is Simon. She lifted one shoulder. “Terrorist attack.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Wait—last summer in Brussels?”

  Oh no. “June, yeah.”

  “What’s your last name?” he asked suspiciously.

  She sighed. Unbelievable. “Bennet.”

  “I knew it! Staff Sergeant Bennet.” He chuckled. “I about fell out when I read your quote in the Times. “

  “I didn’t read it, so . . .” Elizabeth could feel the heat in her cheeks now.

  Simon nodded animatedly. “You gave this big speech about being trained for anything and then they asked you what you did and you said IT. All cool, like all you did was change passwords. That was awesome.”

  Elizabeth winced. “That’s pretty much what I did in Brussels.” I wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Oh yeah?” Simon shot back sunnily. “What’d you do to get sent to the minors?”

  Zach tried, ineffectively, to restore some order.

  Elizabeth tilted her head at Simon. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Please.” he grinned. “I watched that video. I think everyone in here did.” There were murmurs of assent all around the room. Even Zach nodded. “I’ve been in this gun club a long time. Maybe you can fool the civilians, but you can’t fool me.”

  Not all the civilians, she thought. Will picked up on it right away. Still, training isn’t the same as doing.

  “The video? De Roos?” Celia asked, snapping her fingers. “Yeah, I got it now. That was you?”

  Elizabeth nodded. Therapy’s easy, she thought, when Celia does all the talking.

  “That whole situation was tits up, girl,” Celia declared. “You and the officer were outstanding.” She nodded her approval.

  Elizabeth laughed, surprised. “What did you just say?”

  Celia grinned, and shook a finger at her. “I said ‘tits up.’” The men rolled their eyes, shifted their feet, shook their heads. Celia spread her hands out wide, palms up. “What? I can’t exactly say ‘balls up,’ right?”

  “Well, Elizabeth,” Zach interceded with a chuckle as he tried to get the discussion back on track, “it’s nice to meet you.”

  The others agreed, and the conversation moved on. Elizabeth was relieved. For the rest of the hour, she tried to answer when she was asked a question but didn’t offer much else. As much as she liked the vets in this group, she wasn’t comfortable that they all knew who she was. She didn’t really know them, and that inequality bothered her. She knew she was being stubborn, but she’d rather do this on her own. She’d think more about it and maybe talk it over with Will on the weekend. Maybe he’d have some ideas.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Okay,” Will said, sliding his laptop across the table to her. “It’s in West Virginia, and you’d have to go for a solid week, but they don’t make you relive things, exactly, and it’s private.”

  And expensive, Elizabeth thought, checking that out first. Ouch. Still, if it works . . . She kept her eyes on the fee structure and chewed her lip thoughtfully. I can use some of the money Lily made Tom hand over. Poetic justice. He’s one of the reasons I need therapy in the first place.

  Will waited a minute and started to speak. Elizabeth held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t even.”

  He glanced away, a scowl beginning to form. “You don’t know what I was going to say,” he complained.

  She frowned, still reading the information on the website and imagining a young Will kicking a rock across the playground. “So you weren’t going to offer to pay for it?”

  Silence. Then an irritated huff. “Okay, so you did know what I was going to say.” She chanced a look at him. Will’s expression was dour.

  She chuckled and shook her head. Will didn’t like her refusing his money any more than she liked it when he refused hers. “I will pay for my own treatment, whether it’s this intensive therapy thing or something else.” She followed a link to the program’s social media page.

  “It’s just that I’m the one who found this program, and it’s a lot more expensive . . .” he continued doggedly. “You’ll also be in a hotel all week, meals . . . I don’t want money to be an obstacle.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, aggravated, “What’s the good of having all this money if you won’t let me spend it?”

  She grinned, still reading. “You can spend it all you want. Just not on this.” Her forehead furrowed. “’Neuro-Reformatting and Integration’? It sounds like reprogramming. What do you think it means?”

  Will picked his chair up and carried it next to hers before setting it down. “They call it ‘self-repair.’” He pointed at a link and she clicked it. It took them to a page that explained the theory. “You draw things out, you create your own story, you become the author, I guess—it rewrites what happened, you give it an order, a beginning, middle, and end, so you can deal with it in an organized way.” He leaned against her, letting the outside of his thigh brush against hers. Elizabeth glanced over at him. It wasn’t sexual, exactly. He’s just missed having me around. Her frown vanished. She’d missed him, too.

  Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek. She had to admit, this whole endeavor sounded a little weird, but it also resonated. It really was reprogramming, but not in a creepy way. Writing my own story, including how it ends. Putting myself back in control. That I can live with. That I can own.

  “Do you think it’s something you’ll check out?” Will asked. She could hear the hope in his voice. She leaned against him and put her head on his shoulder.

  “I think I will. I’ll speak with them today, but even if I like it, I may have to get on a waiting list. It’s a pretty small place.” She sat up and kissed his cheek.

  Will’s brows pinched together. “I’m sure I can . . .”

  “Will.” One exasperated word, uttered firmly, full stop.

  He groaned and closed the laptop. “Food?” he asked.

  She grinned. “Now you’re talking. I’ll even let you buy.”

  They returned to the apartment after dinner. As they stepped into the family room, Will nabbed a pillow out of midair as it flew at them. Richard stood near the sofa looking annoyed.

  “You’ve been back a week, and this is the first I see you?” Richard asked her. “Got time for popcorn, but not for me?” He gave her a wicked grin. “How’d you like the ticker-tape parade?”

  Elizabeth beamed. “That was the best,” she said, walking
over to him and giving him a shove. “Got me just as I was leaning over the vent. Bam.”

  Will grunted and brushed past her to go towards the entry, his hand touching her back affectionately before he was gone. She heard the clunk as he dropped the fob in the bowl.

  Richard arched back and shook his fists in the air. “Yes!” He looked at her askance. “Did it go up your nose?”

  She laughed outright at that. “No, but it did go in my mouth.” He hooted in triumph, and she gave him another light shove. “At least my joke was edible.”

  “Bennet,” he chided, “it took thirty kids tramping through here to eat all that popcorn. I left Will to do the honors of hosting them all.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “He’s a non-combatant, major,” she chastised. “That was out of line.” She tilted her head at him. “You also got Jane involved, and that was the dirtiest trick of all. My entirely-too-ethical sister is probably eating herself up with guilt.”

  “Oh, I just sweet-talked her out of the key,” he scoffed, but then frowned. “Do you think so?”

  Elizabeth shrugged, “Probably. She’s not going to lose sleep over it or anything, but you set up a terrible conflict for her. She loves me.” Her eyes lit up. “And she loves you, though I can’t figure out why.”

  His expression fell. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, holding up a finger. “I just need to make a call.”

  “He’s whipped,” Elizabeth muttered playfully as she moved into the kitchen. She tossed open the doors and noticed that the bottom shelf still had two bottles of the Fou’Foune she’d bought him at Thanksgiving.

  She heard Will come up behind her. “He wouldn’t let anyone touch it until he saw you again,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s been taking up space in my fridge for weeks. Now that you’re back he might let me clear them out.”

  Elizabeth gazed at the brown bottles. “We are overdue for a drink.”

  Will kissed her ear. “More than six months overdue, I think.” He took her hand. “I have something to ask Richard and then I have work I can do. Just come get me in the office when you’re done.”

  He patted her bottom before leaving the kitchen, laughing at her scowl.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She was sitting out on the terrace, still wrapped in her coat and a woolen winter scarf. Richard dropped himself onto the chair beside her. He held a glass out to her, and she took it in her gloved hand without speaking. She took a drink.

  “Mmm. Still good.”

  He smiled. “I figured after all that work to get them, you deserved at least a taste. The truffles, sadly, are long gone.”

  She laughed. “I had no idea it was going to be so difficult,” she admitted, “but once I started, I couldn’t give in.” She took another sip. “Failure was not an option.”

  Richard took a long drink, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Elizabeth offered no further conversation. He set his beer down and crossed his legs, trying to think of something to say, when her voice pierced through the darkness.

  “It feels so long ago,” she said. “That day.”

  Richard grunted. “It does.”

  “And yet like it was yesterday, too.”

  He glanced up at her profile. She was staring up at the winter sky. He followed her line of vision.

  “Ah, Gemini is out tonight,” he said, almost to himself. “That’s my sign.”

  “There are two of you?” came a cheerfully mocking reply.

  “It might help me if there were,” he admitted, glancing over at her. “Did you know that the twins Pollux and Castor were soldiers?”

  “Appropriate,” Elizabeth said, turning her head towards him.

  “They had the same mother but different fathers,” he continued, leaning back and laying his hands on his stomach.

  “As per the Greeks,” she said drolly. “Always the complicated family history.”

  “Sons of Sparta,” he said with a chuckle, “inseparable.” He paused. “Except that one was mortal and the other immortal. One the son of the King of Sparta and the other the son of Zeus.”

  “Yeah, I seem to recall Zeus getting around,” she said, lifting her bottle to her lips. She swallowed and set it down. Her head moved back to the sky. “Where?” she asked. “I can never see the stars here in the city.”

  “There,” he said, pointing up. “See the Big Dipper? Capella? Just down . . . it’s really bright.”

  She squinted. “Yeah, I see it,” she told him quietly. He let his arm drop and they sat without speaking, just drinking their beers, her vision and his fixed on the stars.

  Richard knew there was something he needed to say to her, but he was having trouble finding the words. It was big, this feeling, and close, maybe too close, to his heart. As jovial as he generally appeared, the deepest parts of himself were tightly controlled, vigorously protected, as was true of every Fitzwilliam man. More for me, I think. He sighed a little. Where am I going with this story?

  “Eventually,” he said, cracking purposefully through the solitude, “Castor died, and Pollux was bereft. He didn’t want to live if his brother was dead.”

  “So, what happened?” Elizabeth prompted him when Richard had hesitated too long.

  “The story has a lot of variations. In some, they share Pollux’s immortality and take turns in Hades and Mt. Olympus. I never liked those stories, because while Castor is alive, they’re still separated.” He frowned. “I like the one where Zeus takes pity on his son and makes Castor immortal, too. Brothers forever.” He waved a hand at the sky. “Immortalized in the heavens.”

  He reached for his beer and took several long pulls before he realized Bennet was looking at him again. He was accustomed to the dark, now, and he could see her eyes shining, waiting for him to finish.

  “Before that day, you were a friend, Bennet,” he said with a shrug. “But now you’re my brother.”

  He saw a quick flash of white teeth and nearly groaned. You know what I mean.

  “I think both Will and Oscar will be surprised to hear that,” she teased lightly.

  “Bennet . . .” he began, but she interrupted him.

  “I know,” she said simply, reaching for her beer. “It’s the same for me.”

  Elizabeth’s fingers were numb, and she shoved them under her arms for warmth. “I’m going in,” she told Richard as she stood and picked up her glass, “it’s getting cold.”

  He held up a hand. “Just one more thing,” he said, his voice low and serious. “It’s not so easy to get a private conversation with you anymore, and this isn’t something we can do by text.”

  She chuckled uneasily and sat. “Okay, what’s up?” She slapped her gloved hands together a few times before shoving them into her coat pockets. She adjusted her woolen scarf over her mouth and nose, tugging it up slightly to cover her ears.

  “Will was doing a lot of research before he left to meet you in California,” he said slowly. “He asked me about therapy. I’m assuming you’re having some trouble. True?”

  Elizabeth gave a disgruntled humph. “Maybe he was asking about you.”

  Richard plowed ahead. “Nightmares?”

  There was a long silence before she answered, begrudgingly, “I did this in group already.” He remained quiet, and finally, she replied, “Yes.”

  “Anxiety?” he asked.

  She shrugged, the movement barely noticeable under all the layers of clothing she had on. “Sometimes.”

  He cleared his throat. Will had been single-minded in his pursuit of a good program since their return. Stab in the dark. “Flashbacks?”

  Her knees came up, and she wrapped her arms around her bent legs. “Why are you asking?”

  Richard rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not trying to pry. It’s just that I’ve been through all that. And it’s hard, even with a therapist.”

  “So?” She sounded defiant, but he could hear the uncertainty beneath it.

  His laugh had a brittle edge. “I want to make sure yo
u’ve got someone to talk to about it. Will is a great guy, but his concern can be a little suffocating sometimes.” He stared straight ahead. “I suspect Jane is the same. And they weren’t there.”

  Elizabeth was nearly motionless. All he could see were the frozen clouds of breath as they left her lips. “You planning to be my therapist?” she asked tartly.

  “No,” he said succinctly, if a bit impatiently. “Brother.” He reached across the table to punch her lightly on the arm. “I can’t believe you forgot already. A great Greek myth entirely wasted on you.”

  “Do you even know any others besides your astrological sign?” she asked, turning to face him, both eyebrows raised in challenge.

  “I do,” he said confidently, rubbing his hands together. “Would you like to hear them all?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No.” A pause and then, “Thank you.”

  “For what?” he asked suspiciously.

  She gave him a sly grin. “For not telling me a million dysfunctional family vignettes disguised as myth.”

  He shook his head. “Is that all?”

  “No.” She tugged at her scarf and stood, walking to the edge of the terrace and gazing out across the street to the park beyond. He stretched his legs out and followed.

  She leaned against the rail. “I dream about De Roos. How fast . . . One flash and that’s it. And what remains?” She huffed, a bit frustrated. “I mean yes, literally, but you know, figuratively.”

  He nodded, kept nodding as he thought about it. “Before Brussels, I hadn’t been in combat for probably two years. I had time to acclimate to my new normal. In some ways, that made it worse, getting thrown back in like that. When I thought I was done.”

  “We’re never done, though, are we?”

  Her voice was heavy. Mournful, Richard thought, and shook his head. “Not with this. Not really.” Her shoulders slumped. “Which is why it’s important to deal with it. Learn to manage it, make your peace.” Maybe I should be a therapist. That wasn’t bad.